The Opening and Closing of Hands
by Next to Something
Summary: After the war against the First Order, Rey has been tasked with the rehabilitation of Kylo Ren. It is a confrontation that she fears not only for the sake of her life, but for the sake of the Force within her. Post-TFA. Reylo. Smut. Some plot. Complete.


**A/N:** A new ship for me, I hope you enjoy! Written as a fill for a prompt from Tumblr. Includes lemons, though not quite PWP. Please let me know what you think!

The title is taken from this quote by Rumi: "Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings."

 **.oOo.**

"No."

Rey turned away from General Organa, pacing in the small space.

"Rey, you're the only one strong enough-"

"What about Master Luke?" Rey interjected. "He's-"

"He will not." Leia shook her head, a slow, mournful gesture. "Ben has done much to warrant Luke's distrust of him."

"And he has not done enough to warrant mine?"

General Organa's stern expression faltered, a disquieting sight in light of recent months. Rey had never seen her smile, but since Han's fall, she had rarely seen much less than a grimace.

"You have done much for us, Rey Kenobi," Leia said with a small nod. "Without you, we would not have bested the First Order, could not have brought about the fall of Snoke."

Rey opened her mouth to reply, but Leia held up a hand before continuing. "I know I have no right to ask this of you. You have also had your losses, your tragedies. But-"

Rey started at the shine of tears in the stolid general's eyes.

"Please. I just want my son back."

Rey chewed her bottom lip, a habit much despised by Master Luke, before giving a curt nod.

"Tell me where he is."

 **.oOo.**

His cell was separate from all others, in an entirely abandoned wing of the ward. It was a large, barren room, with little more than a cot (bolted securely to the floor) and the necessary facilities (no moving parts.)

He stood in the middle of the room, hands clasped behind his back, as if in line for inspection. His robes were more worn now, and less elaborate since his capture. But he held himself proudly, even with his mask long destroyed. He hardly looked in need of rehabilitation.

She felt him even from behind the blast-proof glass. His energy rolling off of him in noxious ripples. His back was to her, but she knew he felt her, too. Ever since that first battle in the snow, she knew that he could feel her, just as keenly as she could feel him.

"I was wondering when you would finally come to see me."

He spun on his heel and she was startled by his face all over again. It didn't matter how many times she saw it, she was never ready.

A soft, tragic face, made only the more wretched by the angry scar cleaving it into disparate halves. The pupil of his right eye permanently blown wide, adding that much more dark to his features, and the slightest grimace in the bright, clinical light of his cell.

"Won't you come in, little Rey?" His voice was soft, inviting. "Let me show you around the place."

Rey waved a hand over the lock and it disengaged with a sharp _clunk._

Kylo Ren raised a hand, Forcing the door smoothly open. "Funny, I could never get the hang of that lock."

Rey paused before entering the cell. He always surprised her with his different approaches to her. Unexpected gentleness that first time in the interrogation room, agression spiked with a potent dose of fascination, of urgency when they faced each other in the snow on Star Killer. Other battles, more serious, for higher stakes, were met with fury and battering desperation. She knew how to interact with each of these faces of Kylo Ren, or at least knew their names.

But this strange playfulness was foreign to her. She did not trust it.

"Come in, Rey." His voice tipped lower, a timbre she well recognized. It sent thrills over her skin as she recognized his invitation for a sparring match.

They were both unarmed, save their connection to the Force. Its energy hummed around them in heavy waves, his dense Darkness nudging against her more frenetic Light. She stepped into the cell as the door slammed closed behind her.

She fluttered her fingers and the clack of the lock sounded again.

Kylo Ren's brows shot up in surprise at the noise. "Afraid I'll run off?"

 _He should smile,_ Rey thought. _This is what is so disarming about his words. They are light, and yet his face remains impassive._

"Or afraid we'll be disturbed?"

She broke her long silence at last. "I'm afraid you're a lost cause."

He canted his head, like some carrion bird.

"I'm afraid, after you kill me, that you'll be able to escape and kill others. I don't want that." She tipped up her chin in a confidence she didn't fully feel. "Not with what little peace we've been able to establish despite your best efforts."

He took a step toward her. "I thought Uncle Luke taught you better than that, little thing. Who's to say you won't kill me first?"

She took a step herself. "Master Luke did teach me, and that is why I won't kill you. Not while there is light in you yet."

Step.

"How do you know what is in me?" His hands swung from behind his back, one fiddling with the space on his belt where his saber used to reside.

Step.

"Because I've seen it, Kylo Ren."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Oh, yes. What you've seen. How long ago was it, little thing, that I had you strapped to that chair? Do you think my mind has not changed since then?"

Rey wished for her staff then, so she might knock him off his feet. He loomed over her, broad beast that he was. She should not wish his pain, his subjugation- _serenity, peace._ But she did _._

"My mind hasn't changed," she answered. It was true. And this was why she feared this confrontation, without sabers, without sides to the battle. Because just as Rey tempted Kylo Ren to the Light, he tempted her to the Dark. She was his way out, but he was her downfall.

"Mind if I look?" His voice was closer than she wanted, almost already in her head.

She chewed her lip again, and his eyes flicked down at the movement. _When had he gotten so close?_

He touched a naked finger to the lip partially caught between her teeth and delved in.

 _"You need a teacher!"_

 _Her mind raced at the words. He could so easily kill her. Why didn't he?_

" _I can show you the ways of the Force!"_

 _And as the world crumbled beneath her feet, she stepped over the chasm that would swallow her whole._

" _So, show me."_

She tried to move her head away, shuffle beyond her reimagining of their first skirmish, but the pressure on her lower lip increased and he dived deeper.

 _Meditations with Master Luke where balance could not be found._

" _Forget him, Padawan. You have a strength he has never grasped, and it is dangerous for your thoughts to linger near his."_

 _Scenes of recent battle where her ruthlessness threatened beyond that which was needed for victory._

 _Images of his face, the first time he removed his mask for her. Kind and sad and more humane than she could otherwise fathom._

He pulled his hand away and still he would not smile. There was victory in his eyes and Rey seethed at it.

Placing her hand firmly along his temple, she squared her shoulders and plunged.

 _Rey dropping to her knees after her saber slashed his face, pressing snow to the wound. Dragging him along with her newfound strength and hustling him aboard the Millennium Falcon, despite Chewbacca's roars of protest._

 _Sparring matches in which she pinned him succinctly within moments. A tense moment of stillness before she flashed him a secret smile and helped him to his feet before-_

He slapped her hand away. "Enough!"

But she wouldn't budge, and pressed hands to both side of his head, held his face between them, her eyes closed with the effort.

 _Staggering, bloody and weak, from the ramp of a Resistance ship and falling heavily into the waiting arms of his mother._

 _Two bodies curled together on a narrow bunk, naked and entwined, as he traced silent words down the notches of Rey's spine._

Rey hit the wall with jarring force, though his face was still caught between her hands. He pressed into her, roiling with livid rage. He gripped her wrists but did not pull her hands away.

"You delve too deep, little thing."

Her eyes snapped open to see his face looming so close to hers.

General Organa's words floated to the surface of her mind.

" _Please. I just want my son back."_

Digging her fingers into the coarseness of his hair, Rey dragged his mouth to hers.

They met in the middle of the kiss, mouths open and breath already mingled. She clawed at him, even as he crushed her into the wall at her back. She poured herself into him, knowing the risk she was taking, seeing again the dark images he had drunk from her mind.

But as his enormous hands let go their hold on her wrists to drag roughly down to her hips, she saw also his own fantasies, of a life more simple. Standing in the light of a new sun, with her.

He was yanking at the waistband of her leggings, scraping her skin as he went. She regretfully pulled her hands from the great mess of his hair to ruck his tunic up his body. Their mouths pulled apart as she wrestled the thing from his body, and he set his teeth to her neck.

He had managed to tug her leggings far enough down her hips for her to wriggle out of them. His hands refocused to the ties of his pants, the sound of fabric ripping loud against the otherwise quiet room.

"Should we- The cot?" Her voice more air than words, more vowel than consonant.

"No." His words struck her low in her belly, rumbling and decisive. "I would have you here."

Freed from his clothes, he pressed fire hot into her naked thigh. Not bothering to rid her of her top, he raked rough fingers up under its hem, down the line of her flat stomach.

Then he found her center, hot as he was. She cried out at the hard passes of his fingers and he gentled his touch. He coaxed her to rise to him, and she scratched blunt nails down the expanse of his back.

His hand left her suddenly, reaching down to cup the back of her knee. He hooked it high over his hip, leaving her stretched to her full extent, the toes of her opposite foot barely brushing the duracrete floor.

"Do you want me, Rey?" She felt him nudging her entrance, so close to adding another link to their ponderous chain. "I would have you say it out loud."

She shuddered at the nearness of the moment, unable to voice her need.

"Because I want you fiercely," he admitted softly, the words hot along the shell of her ear.

He flooded her mind then, images of her with nothing but his long black robe about her shoulders, the extra length pooling around her ankles. Nights of long, comforting sleep in the arms of the other, and other nights of very little sleep at all. Kisses that seemed endless, that gave and took. A balance she had not been able to find since first seeing his sorrowful face.

She nodded once, frantically. "Yes," she breathed. "Gods, I want you, Ben."

He stepped into her then, filling her with a stretching fullness she was aware she was capable of withstanding. She cried out at the sensation of him, his hands gripped so punishing tight at her hips.

One moment of still adjustment, one moment of rushing awareness, and he began to move within her.

She struggled to keep her footing, their sizes differing so, and in a grunt of torrid need, he hiked her other leg up around his waist, lifting her from the floor.

She wrapped herself around his body, clinging to the vastness of him as he continued to pound into her. She arched her back just so, and a strangled noise erupted from him as he slapped his large hands hard against the wall to either side of her.

His face was buried in her neck as their minds intertwined, showing the other what they knew to be true. As his rhythm grew erratic, Rey brought her hands to his hair again, tugging as well as she could.

She wanted to see his face. She wanted to see his undoing.

He gripped her jaw in one of his hands, holding her face steady as he looked her deep in the eyes. He wanted to see her, too.

She unraveled first, all her energy and feeling focusing on her center where their bodies joined. She felt his Dark, hot and heavy like too many blankets on a bed. She felt that temptation as her release rolled through her, as his name rang off the walls of the cell. She felt it, and she did not push it away just yet.

He followed her closely, coming with a force that was sure to bruise her. His voice barked out in broken bursts, his eyes so livid as he willed her to witness him. He was not resisting her Light, and he hated her for it.

When he finally released her, her shaking legs would not support her weight. Never taking his fierce gaze from her, he lifted her easily into his arms, crossing the room and laying her along him in the cot.

They faced each other, and Rey ran her hands curiosity over his face, again and again. Tracing the scar, pressing into the fullness of his lips with her fingertips. Wondering at the freedom to touch him.

He lay still and let her, save one hand drawing lazy swirls on her still exposed hip.

"You told me, long ago, to not be afraid. That you could also feel this thing between us." Her voice was barely audible and she wasn't entirely convinced that she wasn't speaking directly into his mind. "But I am afraid."

He scraped one fingernail down the slope of her hip, scoring the bruises that were already beginning to form there. "I am afraid, too, Rey, though I would not have you know it."

She nodded, satisfied for now, and he tugged the thin sheet up and over their bodies. She pressed more firmly into him, feeling balanced for the first time in months. He tucked her head under his chin and spoke into her mussed hair.

"Would you stay, little thing?"

She nodded against his cooling skin. Feeling a wash of Light soothing the trepidation between them. _Serenity, peace._

"For as long as it takes."

 _ **End.**_


End file.
